Several of my friends have been talking about theology and religion recently. I've classed myself as "atheist" for several years now, but one thing that's occurred to me more in the past few months is how culturally christian I am. This isn't very surprising considering I was brought up attending first Sunday school, then a CoE church on an RAF base in Scotland. My family, including myself were active members of the church. Today, I have a deep respect for a lot of christian teaching, and I have a real interest in the sort of questions to which faith should supplies answers.

I didn't so much lose faith in christianity, but come to believe that humans don't have an immortal soul. That in itself seems to be a fairly hard stop for most religions I can think of. "Atheism" doesn't quite cover it as a description, I don't believe in a god, but that seems to be a secondary question. Whether or not a god exists seems mostly of academic interest if my being is going to be irrevocably destroyed when I die. It also seems to be a mildly unusual position, even many people who aren't religious seem to have some sort of fuzzy idea of a soul. Debating with random evangelicals seems to indicate they're more used to trying to convince people that they have the way to save a soul, rather than having to start by convincing their interlocutor that they have a soul in the first place.